A violent crash claimed the lives of four young men in Drummondville early Sunday morning.
The victims, all men aged between 18 and 22, were inside a car at 3:30 a.m. when it slammed into a tree in a residential area of Drummondville, about 100 kilometres east of Montreal.
The victims are driver Carl Francoeur Ouellette, 22, Gabriel Savard, 19, Jean-Benoit Pelletier, 18, and Alexandre Jutras-Lizotte, 18.
The car sped off the road in a residential area, colliding with enormous force against the tree. The car had to be split in two to recover the bodies, as firefighters used hydraulic spreaders to extract three of the four men from the wreckage.
All four died before they reached hospital.
Speed was a factor in the accident, said police, but it was not yet clear whether alcohol was involved.
Coroner Yvon Garneau has ordered a mechanical expertise test on the 20-year-old car the young men were inside, along with a blood-alcohol test for the driver and passengers.
